New Zealand climate change denial defeated

Posted on September 7, 2012 | 10 Comments

The High Court decision on the Judicial Review of NIWA’s New Zealand temperature record was issued today. I will comment in more depth next week but interested readers can download and read the judgement themselves.

In short – the arguments made by the climate change denial/sceptics/ contrarian groups were tossed out and costs will be awarded against them.

Here is the judgement’s summary:

“[185] The plaintiff does not succeed on any of its challenges to the three decisions of NIWA in issue. The application for judicial review is dismissed and judgment entered for the defendant.

Costs
[186] The defendant is entitled to costs. Given the time involved and the steps taken, costs on a category 2 time band C would seem appropriate. However, if the parties are unable to agree I will receive memoranda and deal with the issue of costs on the basis of such memoranda.”

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10 responses to “New Zealand climate change denial defeated”

  1. Cedric Katesby | September 7, 2012 at 12:12 pm |

    Clearly the global scientific conspiracy goes deeper than anyone ever suspected.
    How much money did the Hard Left Marxists slip under the table to the NZ High Court?
    Do any of the Court ride a bicycle or have shares in solar technology companies?
    Mark this day well, my friends. It is the day TROOTH AND DECENCY AND REAL SCIENCE DIED!!!
    ///

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  2. Uncle Remus | September 7, 2012 at 12:53 pm |

    Uh, Cedric, your fly’s undone.

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  3. Cedric Katesby | September 7, 2012 at 1:43 pm |

    What? How dare you, Sir.
    My pet insect is in perfect working condition!
    (hrrumph)
    The High Court decision is an attempt by an activist federal judges to stop the spread of a scientific idea and even to prevent criticism of Communist Alarmism through government-imposed censorship rather than open debate, and it won’t work. He has conflated the skeptical position with that of deniers, and he totally misrepresents the Heartland Institute and the motivations of the scientists who research natural God-given climate variations.
    A legal ruling can’t change the fact that global warming is not happening, it can’t remove the global conspiracy, nor change the laws of physics. The empirical evidence for everything being just fine and hunky-dory, the facts of rainfall patterns and record-breaking abundance of ice in the Arctic, can’t be changed by legal decree.
    There’s nothing to see here. Move along.
    It is clear that the High Court wants their place in history as the legal institution who issued a definitive decision about climate change. This is an activist judgement which has delusions of grandeur.
    Anyone who thinks a court ruling is going to kill off interest in looking at doubt and endlessly doubting scientists is living in another world. Americans don’t like to be told there is some idea that they aren’t permitted to learn about.. It used to be said that banning a book in Boston guaranteed it would be a bestseller. Banning criticism of Marxist hippies and their crazy NASA satellites and their observational data in NZ will likely only fan interest in REAL skepticism.
    In the larger debate, this decision will be of minor significance. As I’ve repeatedly stressed, the ultimate validity of science skepticism will be determined not by the courts but by the scientific evidence pointing to everything being just fine.

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  5. Dan Pangburn | September 7, 2012 at 8:13 pm |

    Paraphrasing Richard Feynman: Regardless of how many experts believe it or how many organizations concur, if it doesn’t agree with observation, it’s wrong.

    The IPCC and many others perceive that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide was the primary cause of global warming. Measurements demonstrate that they are wrong.

    The average global temperature trend has been flat since 2001. No amount of spin can rationalize that the temperature increase to 2001 was caused by CO2 increase but that 25.2% additional CO2 increase had no effect on the average global temperature trend after 2001.

    Without human caused global warming there can be no human caused climate change.

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  6. Dan Pangburn | September 7, 2012 at 8:16 pm |

    Average GLOBAL temperature anomalies are reported on the web by NOAA, GISS, Hadley, RSS and UAH. The first three all draw from the same data base of surface measurement data. The last two draw from the data base of satellite measurements. Each agency processes the data slightly differently from the others. Each believes that their way is most accurate. To avoid bias, I average all five. The averages are listed here.

    2001 0.3473
    2002 0.4278
    2003 0.4245
    2004 0.3641
    2005 0.4663
    2006 0.3930
    2007 0.4030
    2008 0.2598
    2009 0.4022
    2010 0.5298
    2011 0.3316

    A straight line (trend line) fit to this data has no slope. That means that, for over a decade, average global temperature has not changed. If the average thru July in 2012 (0.3431) is included, the slope is down.

    See other mistakes exposed by me at Climate Realists.

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  7. Ken | September 7, 2012 at 8:39 pm |

    Dan, care to put a statistical significance, a 90% confidence level on your claim?

    Data usually indicates that with the sort of temperature trend observed it is not possible to measure a value significantly different from 0 with less that 17 years of data. That’s why climate change deniers are careful to select small time periods.

    But that is a diversion. The climate change denial group took this case and failed because they could not support their claims of scientific fraud by NIWA.

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  8. Richard Christie | September 7, 2012 at 9:10 pm |

    Come in Dan, sit yourself down and tell us your tale.
    Don’t be shy, we’re all ears.
    Oh, and let us introduce you to Cedric.

    Like

  10. crikeyd | September 9, 2012 at 10:30 am |

    Definitely time to formalise skepticism about the courts or anything that gets in the way of business as usual.
    Hey why don’t we rubbish MIT and LTG, CSIRO or anything that disturbs our processes towards riches.

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